urge parliamentary scrutiny of the state within a state of the Khakis, especially the dreaded spy agency (DGFI). The interference of the Khakis into state politics will once again jeopardize institutionalization of elective democracy, good governance and secularism. The rogues fear social justice activists, critics, politicians and journalists too - Joy Manush!

A day after theWalt Disney
Companydisclosed that it was ending apparel production inBangladesh, that country’s
garment manufacturers expressed alarm that other Western corporations might
follow Disney’s lead. They feared that could bring about a potential mass
exodus that would devastate Bangladesh’s
economy and threaten the livelihoods of millions of people.

Mohammad
Fazlul Azim, a member of the Bangladesh Parliament and an influential garment
factory owner, implored brands not to leave Bangladesh, noting that many
factories did comply with safety standards.

“The
whole nation should not be made to suffer,” he said. “This industry is very
important to us. Fourteen million families depend on this. It is a huge number
of people who are dependent on this industry.”

Factory
owners in Bangladesh as well as Western apparel retailers have faced intense
pressure from governments, consumers and labor groups to improve workplace
safety there after abuilding containing
five garment factories collapsedlast
week outside the nation’s capital, killing more than 430 people.

Several
Western retailers indicated that they were considering new plans to
ensure factory safety, efforts that would require investing in, rather than
abandoning, their operations in Bangladesh.
But few have made financial commitments to upgrade unsafe factory buildings or
to endorse tougher and deeper inspections. So far, pledging money for relief
efforts has been the most common response by big retailers.

Galen G.
Weston, the chairman of Loblaw, a major Canadian retailer, said his company
wanted more rigorous factory inspections that would for the first time examine
the structural integrity of buildings housing these garment factories. He also
said Loblaw, which makes the Joe Fresh apparel line, was trying to figure out
what more it could do to improve workplace conditions there.

Mr.
Weston said he was disturbed that factory managers saw fit to send apparel
workers back into the building last week after it had been declared dangerous.

“What
role does industry play in propagating a manufacturing culture that would take
such risks with people’s lives?” he said. “I’m troubled by the deafening
silence from other apparel retailers on this issue.”

Mr.
Weston said he was upset that only two out of the nearly 30 Western apparel
brands whose goods were manufactured in that building had spoken out about the
disaster.

Officials
from two nongovernment organizations who attended a meeting in Germany on Monday aimed at improving factory
safety in Bangladesh said
Thursday that they were confident that several major retailers would soon join
a broad plan to ensure fire and building safety in Bangladesh factories. But so far,
that plan has been embraced by just PVH, the parent company of Tommy Hilfiger
and Calvin Klein, and the Tchibo Group, a German retailer.

“I’m
quite confident that we will get some of the big retail players to sign on to
this,” said Jyrki Raina, general secretary of the IndustriAll Global Union, a
federation of 50 million workers from 140 countries. “The world will not
forgive us. We will all look ridiculous if there is nothing done.”

If a few
more retail giants sign on, labor groups are likely to turn up the pressure on
others to join the effort or face protests, several officials said. Already,
demonstrators have carried signs outside the stores and offices of major
retailers that bought apparel from factories in the collapsed building. Mr.
Raina said that at the Monday meeting worker advocacy groups and retailers sought
to revise the PVH-Tchibo plan so that it would be acceptable to more retailers
while still maintaining strong workplace protections.

Several
labor advocates voiced optimism that two companies that have taken the lead in
creating a compensation fund for the Bangladesh victims and their families —
Loblaw and Primark, an Anglo-Irish retailer — would join that plan, which calls
for Western retailers and brands to help pay for safety improvements at garment
factories.

Walmart,
Gap and numerous other retailers have balked at embracing the plan. Retail and
labor officials say that is partly because the retailers are concerned about
the plan’s binding legal commitments.

Some companies have taken steps on their own. In October, Gap
announced a $22 million fire and building safety plan with its suppliers in Bangladesh,
without identifying which factories it was using there or how many factories
would be improved under the plan. And three weeks ago, Walmart pledged $1.8
million to train 2,000 Bangladesh
factory managers about fire safety.

Michael
H. Posner, a former assistant secretary of state of human and labor rights in
the Obama administration, called Walmart’s contribution “a drop in the bucket
when you consider you have a thousand faulty workplaces.”

Some
nongovernment organizations estimate that it would cost $3 billion, or $600
million a year for five years, to make the needed fire safety and building
improvements to ensure that Bangladesh’s
more than 4,000 garment factories were safe. Bangladesh exports about $18
billion in apparel a year.

Mr.
Posner, now a professor at the Stern School of Business at New YorkUniversity,
said the Obama administration was not doing enough to address safety problems
in Bangladesh.
“One of the big gaps here is that governments are standing on the sideline,” he
said.

“They’re
neither pushing a united strategy among big companies nor pushing hard enough
on the Bangladesh
government to do the right thing. It’s one thing to convene a meeting, it’s
another thing to say to brands, ‘You have to work together to fix this.’ ”

Representative
Sander Levin of Michigan, the top Democrat on
the House Ways
and Means Committee, and Representative George Miller of California,
the top Democrat on the House Labor Committee, have also urged the
administration to do more to push Western companies and the government of Bangladesh to
fix factory safety problems.

“You
can’t do this piecemeal,” Mr. Levin said. “You have to take the bear by the
tail and get everyone to the table. The governments haven’t done that.”

One
administration official said it was working on a plan that would provide
several million dollars to the Bangladesh
government to help strengthen its efforts to regulate factory buildings,
especially on fire safety.

Mr.
Posner said Disney’s move — apparel represents less than a fifth of the nearly
$40 billion in annual sales of its licensed products — might encourage other
Western brands to leave Bangladesh.
“Now other companies feel they have a green light.”

David
Schilling of the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility said he
generally supported a “stay and improve” — not a cut and run — approach for
Western companies in countries like Bangladesh.

“There
have to be signals to government and suppliers, especially when you have loss
of life, that positive steps have to be taken,” he said. “But you also have to
have companies saying, ‘Enough is enough. We’re wanting to see significant
change or we can’t source here.’ ”

Steven Greenhouse is the labor and workplace reporter for The
New York Times, having held that beat since October 1995. As labor and
workplace reporter, he has covered many topics, including poverty among the
nation’s farm workers, Wal-Mart stores locking in their workers at night,
labor’s role in politics, the shortcomings of New York State's workers
compensation system and the battles to roll back collective bargaining rights
for public employees. His book, "The Big Squeeze: Tough Times for
the American Worker," was published in April 2008 by Alfred A. Knopf.
"The Big Squeeze" was published in paperback in February 2009 and won
the 2009 Sidney Hillman Book Prize for nonfiction.